Xypherous discuss about Spell Vamp on AD Casters

1. Why don't we release LDVP on SR? It is the perfect AD Caster item.

Because it would effectively shut out the AD Caster class from existing because AD/SV/CDR is the perfect AD Bruiser item. There's no way that AD Burst Assassins (Talon/Pantheon) could ever pick this up and feel good about it - mostly because it doesn't actually work to help them in a fight given their spike damage and the fact that their abilities are AoE.

The people whom SV *does* help sustain in lane are typically the direct counters to AD Assassins - I.E. fighters. Twisted Treeline showed that while LVDP was decent - Lee Sin/Shyvana/Olaf were some of the best users of the item.

2. SV doesn't help you sustain in lane either.

Talon has exactly one spell that benefits from spell vamp and it's AoE. Pantheon at the very least has Spear Shot - but is horrendously gated on Mana from using it as a primary form of Sustain. Zed *may* have the best shot at sustaining in a lane, given that he's an energy character but again, AoE damage.

3. 'I'm buying wasted stats because they enhance my autoattacks'

You cannot balance a character around players not wanting to autoattack. You can't balance for the one player who wants to spam all his buttons and leaves and the player that sticks around to commit two or three more autoattacks before dying.

Any AD item, even a raw AD item, benefits #2 disproportionately greater than #1, simply due to the fact that autoattacks have a pretty decent ratio and will always be the tool with the highest sustained damage on your kit.

While it's true that we could make an item that essentially just makes your autoattacks useless - but there's no point in making an item that would justify this trade-off. We have those characters. They're called Mages. There's no point in making an item that essentially trivializes the one aspect of an AD Caster that actually allows them to stand apart from Mages - the fact that in any given situation, they have a incredible sustained damage tool.

True, it's probably not one anyone in this thread *wants* - but that's the price you pay when you have Attack Damage as one of your primary statistics. That's something that is going to be intrinsic on your character - you have a decent autoattack.

4. The vast part of S3 changes for AD Casters were systems related.

Linking from above: the two unique advantages that AD Casters have is that they have high amounts of base physical damage (typically AoE) and that raw health cannot counter them due to the fact that they can just simply autoattack you down if you are a raw health class. This puts them in a unique spot where the best effective counter to them is resistances (armor, specifically.)

However, the biggest changes in S3 revolve around this fact. AD Casters have the unique advantage of having the Flat Pen --> % Pen itemization path make sense on them. That they sacrifice almost nothing for going pure Flat Penetration and that % Penetration on them makes sense without any other items because they have such high base physical damage.

The second change in S3 was the repricing of attack damage to be cheaper than before. Whatever AD Carries gained from this was offset by the fact that attack speed is generally a more expensive statistic than before.

5. There really isn't a point in making utility items when you don't bring the class for utility.

At the moment, AD Casters always fight for the same role - because they *are* always the same role, assassin / tanky assassins. There's no sustain-tank AD Caster (Swain). There's no Control AD Caster (Zyra). There's no Siege AD Caster (Heimerdinger). There aren't supportive AD (Lulu). By contrast, there *are* tanky AP Casters (Rumble) or Assassin AP (Fizz). Itemization doesn't make any of these guys their role. Their kits do.

What this boils down to is that any utility based item tailored towards AD Caster / Assassin will generally ignored unless they're *also* overpowered for AD reasons because all current AD Casters / Assassins are brought for damage. If they don't itemize for damage - they're pretty pointless to bring in the first place.

When you can conceivably think of bringing an a character with AD ratios for their utility - they're generally better suited building tank as they tend to be melee.

When you boil down to the trifecta of a tanky/utility/damaging character - (for example, if Jarvan was fully itemized for and had tanky/utility/damage items) - That generally just means that the character is overpowered. Mages tend to be tanky or highly threatning. They tend to be utility focused or tank-centric. Any character that accomplishes all three is generally a warning flag because their existence will shut out a lot of of characters from seeing play.

6. Item premium reductions mean that you don't need an item with the perfect ball of statistics for you.

This is also what's known as the 'hybrid AD/AP problem.' I'm going to explain why it's generally a trap on S2 to build anything but items with 'efficient statistics' - It's because the higher up the item tree you go - the more stat/cost efficient the item becomes. That Tier 3 item gave you 70% more gold worth of statistics than that base item, for example - and roughly 50% more efficiency than most mid-tier items.

Having a bunch of mid-tier items sit around in your inventory was awful - because it was strictly less gold efficient by miles if you didn't finish them - This is also the same problem that leads to the 'This mid-game item needs an end-game item' syndrome - because, even if you don't have enough gold to upgrade it - it still isn't worth the slot because it's a still inefficient use of gold comparatively to all the options you have now.

However, this is *also* what leads to the 'inefficient' itemization problem. Unless you had a perfect ball of statistics tailored to your class - there was no way you could 'piecemeal' a build together for a particular niche - because the stat efficiency of that piecemeal was almost guaranteed to be 20% less efficient that any other item path you could go down.

With S3, we're aiming at a high end gold premium of roughly 40% at the high-end for Tier 3 and around 25% for Tier 2 taking into account context and general considerations aside. Picking items piece by piece and having multiple mid-tier items as your mid-game build is no longer a huge trap.

Brutalizer --> Tiamat --> Last Whisper, for example is a 6k build for AD Casters that is now very strong on them simply due to the fact that you don't have to go all the way down to Tier 3 items to be stat efficient.

In general, items that are 'perfect balls of stat' necessitate us to either nerf characters who use it fully into the ground or bind that item to that character class forever - such that there's no point in building any other build - while this might be good practice on area-damage mages - this is actually an awful effect on things like AD Bruisers who can build tank and be used for their utility.

There's a reason Tank Morgana or Tank Kennen isn't a thing even though they have the utility and melee requirements to match - it's because their Caster builds are so much better that they've shut them out from existing - similarly with AD Bruisers here.

Source: http://na.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?p=31607468#31607468